


World Float Away

by furrylittlebantha



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22645996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furrylittlebantha/pseuds/furrylittlebantha
Summary: On the flight back from Bespin, Luke has difficulty coming to grips with his heritage.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	World Float Away

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted several years ago on another site; consolidating here for archival purposes.

He had a most interesting sensation in those days—the truly remarkable impression that space and time were ripping around him, crumpling into particles of nothingness and fluttering away. There was a whistling sound in his ears and a twist of vertigo, a balancing problem. These things happen when you dangle alone in a void.

“What time is it?” he constantly asked of Leia. She began to look at him strangely.

“Five minutes later than the last time you asked.”

“And what time was that?”

Leia turned her face slightly so their eyes did not meet. He thought about how he must look, haggard and hungry with bloodshot eyes that burned. He wondered if she would catch him if he fell. It occurred to him that she couldn’t; it was impossible. Leia still walked securely in the space and time that had left him. He must balance alone.

“What time?” he repeated. She told him and left, disturbed. She did not understand. They no longer spoke the same language. _What time is it…in the real world? How is it that time can go on passing as if nothing was different?_

_How can life go on?_

But she only heard him asking for the time. 

Lando came in and talked brightly of rescuing Han, of plans and hope. Luke watched his lips move. He smiled and nodded, hoping it would fool the gambler. How could Lando know that Luke stood on the other side of a glass, able to observe but completely disconnected from reality?

He couldn’t know, but he wasn’t fooled, either. As the awkward silences became longer and more frequent, a sheen of brittleness coated Lando’s laugh, and the smile retreated until it holed up desperately at his mouth. Luke watched the last stand of the smile and waited patiently.

“Well, then,” Calrissian said at last. “So we’re on the same page and you’re onboard for a rescue. Great…Hey, how’s that hand working?”

Luke held it up and flexed it with exaggerated motions. “Like a charm.”

“Great,” he repeated. “Just great. Glad we could fix you up there.”

With a concentrated effort, Luke grinned at him. Calrissian winced.

“Yeah, well, nice talking to you, Skywalker. I’ve got to be going…ship needs checking up on…you know how things can go wrong at the drop of a hat.”

A slightly hysterical chuckle bubbled out of Luke’s chest at that. “I can relate.”

He went on laughing long after Lando left. The sound bounced off the slick walls and pounded at his head like little hammers, but he couldn’t stop. He thought, as he was laughing, of that long night on Hoth. He thought of the snow that plunged so far into cold it burned instead of chilled. Sometimes, he speculated, a thing can be so un-funny that it makes you laugh instead of cry.

“Who are you?” Luke asked the mirror one morning. The stranger staring back was maddeningly silent. “Who are you?” _Luke Skywalker_ , his mind told him. _Ah_ , his heart said back. _But who is that_?

The more he considered it, the more complicated the question became. How can you define yourself? Before last week, his sense of identity was lodged so deeply he never thought to analyze it. He knew how others described him. Sometimes he overheard them in the hallways talking about him, maybe bragging about how much they knew. _Oh, you know, Skywalker, that guy from Tattooine who took out the Death Star. They say he’s got Jedi powers._

That was a good starting place as any. Tattooine. Was that where his heritage lay, truly? Who knew where his mother had given birth to him? Maybe Coruscant. Maybe Obi-Wan got him away later. Maybe the Emperor’s own medics had attended her as she brought Darth Vader’s bastard into the world.

He abandoned that line of thought and moved on to the next. This one appeared more promising. A person can’t escape their place of birth, but everyone has control of their own actions. He was a hero, dammit. A kriffing hero. Who had saved the plans for the Death Star? Who had rescued the Princess? Who had volunteered to fly into certain death for a cause that was not technically his? Who had fired that fateful shot, the one that saved them all? Who obliterated the ultimate weapon…

…and the lives of thousands?

Who was elevated in an instant from nobody to hero…

…and mass murderer?

Fresh start. Jedi powers. May as well try that one. The Force gave him life, gave him light and guidance and the abilities to follow where it led. Could it give him an identity, too? He eased into the waiting pool of vibrancy, warm to his mind. Gently, it infused his body with strength. _Courage,_ it whispered. _Peace._ Images slid into his mind, memories of his journey toward strength.

_Obi-Wan settling the blast helmet over his head with an air of finality. Luke swinging wildly, more frustrated by the second. Tiny darts of pain making him squirm. Han laughing at the table. The elusive wisps of…something, so fleeting he’s sure he imagined them when they fade. The nebulous sense of brushing against something so vast it could swallow him and the galaxy millions of times over. The fear, and the joy…_

_Obi-Wan whispering to him, a voice he hears but does not hear. Telling him to let go. To trust._

_The light._

_Swimming in it, drinking it in, alive for the first time in his life. Luke and the Force becoming one glorious entity._

_Too exhilarated to hear the cry, the horrible, unified scream of a thousand souls dying at once. Too happy to notice the sickness in his gut. Too alive to feel the death all around. Too thankful to Obi-Wan to ask him that crucial, unbalancing, spacetime ripping question: what are you making me into?_

Luke pulled himself out of the Force with a gasp as if dashed with cold water.

“I’m not!” he shouted in a whisper. “I’m not…not his.” Of course you’re not, his mind said. Of course you are, his heart contradicted. Doesn’t all the evidence point in that direction? And his mind brooded sullenly at the notion of his heart coming to the logical conclusion first. Intuition is often more accurate than reason, Luke observed. I knew deep down below thought that Vader was telling the truth, when even now my conscious mind denies it.

_Luke Skywalker, son of Darth Vader._

Swirls of the cosmic substance gathered before his eyes. Dangling in emptiness, he watched the wisps of reality weave together into a new space and time. It formed before his eyes, this new identity, this fresh and tantalizingly solid world. Hovered; gleamed; beckoned; waited so eagerly for him to accept its refuge and step inside.

A serious, dark-clad young man stepped out of the mist. He held out a hand. 

_Come,_ the figure said gently. _Accept and become real once more. Time can move again for you._

It was tempting. To know the time…

Luke turned his head aside and listened to the howling of the wind in his ears. He lurched slightly; extended his hands to balance himself in the void.

Soon he would go. Soon he would accept in his mind what his heart already knew. Soon he would be ready. But not yet.

Luke laughed some more and stared at his artificial hand for a long time and then fell into a sepia-toned sleep cross-hatched with dreams.

These things happen when your world floats away.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from an e. e. cummings poem.


End file.
